English engineer who designed the Mulberry Harbours – the floating roadways and their anchors – which enabled landing of vehicles and equipment on the Normandy beaches following D-Day in WW II.
Starting the war as a sapper digging trenches on the South Coast at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation. Allan Beckett came to play a significant role in the success of the Mulberry harbour used during and after the Normandy landings of June 1944.
His contribution to the Mulberry was to design the floating roadways which connected the pierhead to the shore, and a system of anchors. The roadway had to be strong enough to withstand constant wave action which, as occurred in the appalling weather of June 1944, was much more severe than anticipated. Beckett’s design, which had been tested in the severe conditions of Scotland in winter, survived the storm which struck on 19 June 1944, and raged for three days.
After being demobbed Beckett joined Sir Bruce White, Wolfe Barry and Partners as chief engineer. There he was responsible for projects in India including Mazagon Dock, the Tata locomotive works, the Bombay Marine oil terminal and a self-scouring lock gate to cope with heavily silt-laden waters at Bhavnagar. In the UK he built factories for Bibby. In 1959 he became a partner in the firm, and developed techniques for mini-hydraulic model studies which were used for designing the new port at Muara in Brunei as well as major port expansion work at Aden, Harwich and Cardiff.